Reversal theory and emotional and psychophysiological processes in mother-daughter interactions

摘要

This thesis investigated the emotional and psychophysiological processes inudmother-adolescent daughter dyads using reversal theory constructs (Apter, 1982)udincluding metamotivational states, metamotivational dominances, and reversaludprocesses.udExperiment 1 used 63 mother-daughter dyads and sought to identify theudpredictors of perceived conflict in the family environment and to investigateudemotional processes during neutral, conflictual and pleasant conversationaludinteractions. The results revealed associations between the perceived conflict in theudfamily and each of parenting skills and stress, psychopathology, motivational styles,udanger intensity and perceived control and organisation in the family. Also, theudconversations generally reduced the levels of hedonic tone and transactional gain andudincreased the levels of transactional loss for the participants. The conflictualudconversation induced lower levels of pleasant emotions and higher levels of the telicudstate, stress, and unpleasant emotions than the neutral or pleasant conversations.udDaughters experienced greater levels of paratelic emotions and transactional loss thanudmothers, which was consistent with the mother-daughter differences in arousal seeking,udnegativistic and autic-mastery dominance.udIn Experiment 2, a high-conflict group (12 dyads) and a low-conflict groupud(12 dyads), were established on the basis of the Conflict subscale of FamilyudEnvironment Scale to examine emotional changes and physiological arousal duringudneutral, conflictual and pleasant conversational interactions. The high-conflict group experienced greater levels of unpleasant emotions and positive transactionaludemotions than the low-conflict group. There was no significant difference inudsympathetic arousal between the groups. Experiment 2 also examined theudmetamotivational and emotional predictors of individual physiological responsesudduring the dyadic interactions. It was found that anxiety and anger (low hedonic toneudin a telic state) and excitement and provocativeness (high hedonic tone in a paratelicudstate) were associated with levels of sympathetic arousal of participants. Bothudtransactional loss and gain were related to physiological responding.udIn Experiment 3, the same high and low conflict dyads in Experiment 2 wereudused to examine the levels of physiological linkage between dyads and identify theudmetamotivational and emotional predictors of physiological linkage. The resultsudindicate that the physiology of daughters predicted the responses of mothers betterudthan vice versa. It was also shown that daughters' ratings of provocativeness andudplacidity were both predictive of physiological linkage. Both transactional loss andudgain were related to shared physiology. For the high-conflict group, physiologicaludlinkage was stronger during the conflictual conversation than the pleasantudconversation.udOn the whole, the results demonstrated the utility of reversal theory constructsudin explaining the interplay between the operative metamotivational state, reversaludprocesses, motivational styles and contextual features in emotional and physiologicaludprocesses in mother daughter dyads. However the verbal, non-verbal, and cognitiveudfactors that instigate reversals remain to be investigated.